


In Valparaiso

by Garonne



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-08-27 17:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8410168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garonne/pseuds/Garonne
Summary: Jack and Stephen go for a walk together and avoid talking about the night before.Set soon after the film ends, but heavily influenced by the style of O'Brian's books.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lost_constant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_constant/gifts).



> Set soon after the film ends, but heavily influenced by the style of O'Brian's books.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this! I was very tempted by your Scarlet Pimpernel prompt too, but in the end I couldn't resist the simple pleasure of "Jack and Stephen interacting".
> 
> Many thanks to Kate Nepveu for beta-reading.

.. .. ..

Jack was breathing hard by the time he reached the hilltop, and his shirt was sticking to his back. He was grateful for the brisk sea breeze that greeted him as he broached the crest and saw the Pacific Ocean spread out below him.

He set down the wicker cage Stephen had imposed upon him to carry, and sank onto a convenient rock, unbuttoning his collar and loosening his neckcloth. In the cage, the opossum sneezed at him.

"Bless you," said Jack, taken aback.

Twenty yards lower down the hillside, Stephen was scrabbling around in the mud under the bushes, looking for Lord knows what.

Valparaiso was a cluster of tiny pink, blue and yellow facades far below, serenely pretty in the morning sun. From his vantage-point, Jack could see the old city around the port, and tendrils of new houses climbing up the lower slopes of the steep hills that formed a natural amphitheatre around the bay.

In the harbour, the _Surprise_ was a child's toy. He wished he had brought his telescope, so that he might more clearly see the carpenters swarming all over her, the refitting in full swing. This morning on leaving the inn his thoughts had been in such disarray, his spirits so perturbed, that he had forgotten even his pocket handkerchief.

His attention was caught by a new arrival among the whalers and local fishing boats that filled the deep-water harbour. From this distance he could make out only her two square-rigged masts. She must have come in while he and Stephen were climbing the hill.

Jack pulled his flask from his pocket and took a long draught. Stephen had the ham and cheese, and Jack considered calling down to him to look lively and come join him. An uncustomary feeling of awkwardness stayed his tongue.

Yesterday they had taken rooms at the Royale for the duration of the Surprise's refitting, and thereby found themselves in true privacy for the first time in eight months or more. It had allowed them an indulgence they rarely permitted themselves.

He remembered Stephen's low voice, after supper in their rooms. "Won't you lock the door, my dear?"

He had perfectly understood Stephen's meaning, and rose at once, his heart speeding up in his chest and blood rushing to his parts.

Now, Stephen's shout of triumph interrupted Jack's recollections. He emerged from the bushes clutching something in his hand, and carefully stowed it in a glass jar hanging around his neck. He stopped to brush absently at the muddied knees of his breeches, and then disappeared into the trees on the path Jack had followed to the hilltop. A few minutes later he appeared at Jack's elbow.

"I had quite forgotten I wished to take your pulse directly after the climb," he said by way of greeting. "It is too late now." He shot Jack a contraried look, as though the blame were entirely his.

They were out for a walk on Stephen's orders, he having prescribed brisk exercise for all the crew, acutely conscious of the effects of a stay ashore on the seaman's constitution: drunkenness and gross over-eating, inevitably leading to costive stomachs and dyspepsia. He had treated Jack to a lecture on the imprudent habits of the sailor - his tendency to anxiety and hypochondria when not occupied by the daily grind of naval life - the general state of health of idle, indolent officers cooped up on board ship - the necessity to seize every opportunity to refresh the humours and stimulate the circulation through exercise. Ashore, Jack was the only person for whom Stephen could in fact enforce his prescription, and so here they were.

Stephen had stooped to check on the welfare of the opossum. Jack watched him, his mind over-busy.

Last night he had kissed Stephen, quite spontaneously. He was not sure what he thought of that.

Stephen had seemed to like it, at the time. Jack's face grew warm now just thinking on it. In the past, on the handful of occasions they had lain together, he had offered Stephen other, far more intimate services with hardly a second thought. He could not for the life of him explain why this was different, but it was.

"There is a new brig in the harbour," Jack said now.

"Is there now?" cried Stephen, without so much as casting a glance in the right direction. "You astound me."

"I believe she is a merchantman."

"Is she indeed? Shift over now, Jack, there's a good fellow. You are taking up the sunny side of the rock."

He spread out an assortment of damp mosses and ferns to dry in the sun. It was early June, the depths of winter, which in these climes meant a damp day and pleasant temperatures, cool but not cold.

"My pulse was perfectly fine, by the by," Jack said after a pause.

Stephen grunted, sounding unconvinced. His samples disposed to his satisfaction, he settled down on the ground, his back against Jack's rock, so that Jack could see only the top of his head.

"Are you quite well yourself, Stephen?" Jack ventured. "This morning you seemed uncommonly... preoccupied," he finished, choosing this at the last moment over 'out-of-sorts'.

"My recluse spider died in the night."

"I am very sorry to hear it," Jack said promptly, suspecting the relief in his heart was showing in his expression, and glad Stephen could not see his face.

Stephen had been gone from the bed when Jack woke this morning, and when they met at the breakfast table Stephen had been distinctly waspish and surly. Jack had been unable to avoid drawing a connection with the previous night.

He cleared his throat. "I thought, maybe -- I did wonder whether -- "

They never discussed their relations, and he scarcely knew how to frame his thoughts in words.

Fortunately, Stephen seemed to catch Jack's meaning with ease. He turned his head to meet Jack's gaze, and waited in silence for Jack to continue.

Jack could not say what he really wanted, which was to ask Stephen if he felt offended - felt Jack had overstepped some boundary - taken a liberty -

"Sometimes I think we do not really know what we are about," he said instead. "We are thoughtless... imprudent..."

"Not in life," Stephen said firmly. "What, pray, could be more prudent, more desirable than a quiet evening in good company? Particularly as opposed to a visit to the bawdyhouse ladies, with their lousy state and venereal afflictions."

Jack winced at the bald mention of something more terrifying to a sailor than broadsides or tempests. He was strangely vexed at Stephen's words. Firstly, at the implication that he would hurry to the port doxies at the first opportunity if not distracted. An undeserved slur, which he would have protested at any other moment. The second cause of vexation was much more difficult to pin down, but it centred on the disagreeable notion that Stephen thought so little of what loomed so large in his own mind.

"Indeed, we have a most convenient arrangement," he said, unable to entirely keep the misery from his voice. "Just so."

Stephen looked at him strangely. "You mistake my meaning, I think."

Silence hung heavily, almost tangibly in the air between them. After a moment Stephen pulled out a wax-cloth packet.

"We are not under the tyranny of your hourglasses and your ship's bells today, and I believe I may safely propose luncheon at this hour without being called to Naval order."

It was so very typical of Stephen, so plainly calculated to provoke, that Jack laughed aloud, and the awkwardness was dispelled.

"I suppose we may stretch the point just this once," he conceded.

In comfortable silence they munched on cold ham, manchego cheese and bread, washed down with a bottle of wine. It was a hearty meal, and after their long climb uphill, it soon began to have a soporific effect. Jack had joined Stephen on the ground, to more conveniently share the bottle, and now he leant back against the rock, his eyes closed. Stephen was a warm pressure against his shoulder.

The previous day had been a long one. Jack had spent the morning wrangling with the master-attendant over the twice-laid cordage and knotty spars the blackguard was trying to pass off on the _Surprise_. Stephen had gone to the port hospital to operate on a particularly tricky irreducible hernia. He had come back spattered in blood, and full of what the head surgeon had had to say about the region's xylophagous insects. Then they had dined with Admiral Swift of the South America Station, who'd insisted on hearing the entire tale of their chase of the _Acheron_.

Before Jack could drift off to sleep, he was roused from his doze by Stephen's voice in his ear. "Jack. Jack."

He felt Stephen's kiss on his cheek and then, when Jack turned his head, on the lips.

Jack had never kissed like this before, slow and steady, no expectation of anything more. He ventured to slip a hand around the back of Stephen's head, to play with the close-cropped hair there, and was rewarded by a soft sigh against his lips.

Finally, Stephen drew back.

"There is more to it than mere convenience, you know, at least on my part," he said, and spoilt the effect by stifling a yawn.

"Then you are a man quite of my own mind," Jack said happily.

Stephen's eyes were already drifting closed. He slipped a hand into the front of Jack's jacket, settled himself more comfortably on Jack's shoulder, and was asleep within half a minute.

Jack leant his head back and closed his own eyes, smiling to himself.

.. .. ..

**Author's Note:**

> The description of Valparaiso is from several decades later, since in 1805 the real-life Valparaiso wasn't much of a port, not to mention being in Spanish territory at the time.


End file.
